


Strength, and how to take advantage thereof

by gwevyan



Series: Anders and Mitchell [2]
Category: Being Human (UK), The Almighty Johnsons
Genre: Anders is a little shit, Gen, but also a good friend, but mostly a little shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-23
Updated: 2014-05-06
Packaged: 2018-01-20 13:48:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1512806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwevyan/pseuds/gwevyan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mitchell is much stronger than a normal human- or a god of poetry.  Anders is not one to let a talent go to waste.  Part of a series, but perfectly fine as a stand-alone!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Moving Day

**Author's Note:**

> I do really enjoy this and I got some very sweet comments on the first bit, so I’ve decided to continue. But as I already have two large WIPs that I continually abandon, I’m not going to make this a real narrative-arc story: I’m just going to keep writing one-shot style additions that will all fit within this ‘verse but may come out of order- and they’ll probably tend to be more single silly little moments rather than ‘oooh, plot is happening!’  
> There will also apparently be some switching back and forth between first and third person. I DEEPLY SINCERELY apologise for that because it is the height of bad writing, and may be very annoying for some people, but the first chapter came out as third person and couple be nothing else while the second came as first person and was equally immovable. Sorry, sorry, sorry!  
> STORY NOTE: all I had in mind while writing this is Mitchell’s grin when Anders puts on the way-too-big basketball shorts. Just like the little grins he does in this: http://goldenlionprince.tumblr.com/post/58712333305/anders-learns-that-vampires-dont-have  
> I linked to that because I remembered it and it was easier than scrolling through episodes to find exactly the right expression he does sometimes, but- it's one of many brilliant, fantastic awesome gifsets by that tumblrist. I seriously recommend everyone go check her out right now!

Mitchell is inhumanly strong when he wants to be. He usually doesn’t, and he’s been around plenty long enough to know and control his own strength- except sometimes when he’s really happy or really drunk, and then his bear hugs can crack ribs.

Anders knows that he himself is larger-than-life. Even aside from the whole god thing, he’s got more swagger and confidence than a whole company of film stars, he’s quicker-witted than nearly anyone he’s met, and his perfected ‘smug grin’ has no parallel. He might wear fashionable suits and hair products but aside from Mitchell he’s still never met a man more masculine than himself. Well, except Thor. But that hardly counts.

Anyway, the point is that men don’t generally like feeling emasculated, especially not because of a short guy with the golden curls and dimpled smile of an angel. So he’s used to other guys trying to assert their authority and use their greater height or strength in an effort to make him cower down.

Mitchell doesn’t ever try that, not seriously. Anders can think of plenty of reasons for this. For one thing, a guy who willingly wears a baby pink tee over a bright yellow shirt with ball-achingly tight black skinny jeans probably has different ideas about emasculation than most people. For another, if you’re the guy whose mere name makes most crazed, mass-murdering vampires quake with fear, then toughness and superiority is probably not something you really have to feel insecure about. And for a third, Anders wonders if it’s even possible for a man with that amount of chest hair and those barn-wide shoulders to ever feel like anything other than Tarzan’s more testosterone-filled idol.

So Mitchell jokes around sometimes, holding coffee cups high over Anders’ head or pinning him at his desk with a casual hand weighing like a stone on his shoulder until Anders finally gives up and agrees to do some work, but Mitchell never postures or uses his advantages to try to force Anders into anything (he could slip down in his chair and crawl out from under the desk if he really wanted to, and if his trousers weren’t too expensive to go scuffing his knees on the floor). He’s just a mostly-gentle giant. Anders picks up on this quickly. And, as always, finds a way to use the knowledge to his benefit.

1: MOVER

‘No, I don’t like this. Try over there, under the smaller window.’

‘You’ve already tried under the smaller window!  Twice!’

‘But I’ve already forgotten quite what it looked like, and I want to see it again.’

Mitchell mutters mutinously and curses under his breath, but he heaves on the sofa again, pushing it- and Anders, sitting on the back and directing like the admiral of a ship- up against the wall under the window. Anders leans from side to side and looks around, taking in the new view.

‘No, that’s no good. The room looks too narrow now. It needs to be parallel to the shorter wall.’

‘Argh!’ Mitchel throws up his arms, then suddenly lunges forward and seizes the sofa and pulls on it so roughly that Anders topples off onto the seat cushions. He hauls them farther out into the room, spins the sofa halfway round, then slams his hands onto the back. Anders, sprawled on his back with his knees tucked up and his fingers clinging white-knuckled to the cushions, stares up at him with wide eyes. Mitchell fixes him with a solid black glare. ‘No more,’ he snaps. ‘The damn sofa is staying right here and you will like it.’

Anders props himself up on his elbows and peers around, ignoring the low growling and bared fangs above him. ‘Actually,’ he says, surprised. ‘You know what, this is alright! I like having the walkway behind it, I can actually stand at the big window now. You should build a window seat- though, on second thought, maybe we shouldn’t leave the carpentry job to the vampire, huh?’

Mitchell glowers and crosses his arms, but Anders can see that his eyes are narrowed and his lips pursed the way he always does when he wants to keep scolding Anders for something but also really wants to smile. Anders waves a hand.

‘Whatever, Mike will have some friend who can do it.’ He hops up to his feet, claps his hands, and starts pushing Mitchell towards the door. ‘Come on, there’s still a whole moving van left!’

Mitchell groans. ‘Why am I even helping you?’

Anders grins and claps his shoulder as they trot down the stairs. ‘Because you’re paid to help me.’

‘At a PR company. Moving house was definitely not in the job description.’

‘Because you’re my friend?’ Anders tries.

Mitchell slants another glare at him. ‘Friends don’t shamelessly take advantage of friends’ supernatural strength and make said friends push them round the entire flat on heavy furniture for hours on end.’

Still, he gamely hauls the two mattresses out of the van, props them on their sides, bends them and wraps his arms around until he gets a secure hold on both, and starts carrying them awkwardly back up the stairs. Anders jogs up after him and presses on the free side so they won’t slide out of Mitchell’s grasp.

‘You didn’t have to take both at once,’ he points out, stepping back to let Mitchell squeeze through the door with the bulky load. ‘The van’s still full of all the clothes and art and boxes, besides the rest of the furniture. We’ll be at this all night as it is.’ They’d decided it was probably best to start the moving work after dusk, because Anders knew and Mitchell was resigned from the beginning that the vampire would be doing most of the heavy lifting, and it would be too awkward for him to take his sunglasses off every time he went from the van to the door if his arms were full of boxes.

Mitchell huffs out a laugh as he staggers down the hallway with the unwieldy mattresses. ‘What, and listen to you complaining about being tired any longer than necessary?’ He huffs again, this time decidedly less amusedly, when he briefly gets stuck in the bedroom door. ‘Why the hell do you have two mattresses, anyway?’

Anders flattens himself to the wall to scoot around the ends of the mattresses, then gestures at the other three doors in the hallway, all closed. Mitchell drops the mattresses to the floor and rests his arms on them to look on curiously. Anders points at his bedroom door, last in the hall and on the right. ‘My room,’ he says, then points to the door opposite. ‘Toilet.’ He points at the door next to his. ‘Not actually a room, just a big closet. And that one-’ he points at the last closed door, first in the hall and on the left- ‘is the guest room. And I can’t tell guests to sleep on the floor in an empty room, can I?’

Mitchell snorts and goes back to hauling the older mattress into Anders’ room, correctly assuming that the new one is for the guest bed. ‘When the hell have you ever needed a guest room? Certainly not for anyone female, and you never want to let your brothers stay the night.’

Anders shrugs and shoves his hands into the pockets of his basketball shorts. They’re actually a pair of Mitchell’s, because Anders’ closet has very little in it besides designer suits, underwear, and a few t-shirts for sleeping in. Mitchell had thoughtfully guessed that clothing would be a problem and brought the plain black shorts to Anders’ old flat when he arrived, and Anders- at that moment torn between wearing an older pair of trousers with worn hems or just going in his briefs and hoping Bragi would prevent him from getting arrested for public indecency- immediately stripped there in the entry and pulled them on.

To his dismay, the waist had slid right down his hips until he seized the drawstring and the legs stopped somewhere around his lower calves. Mitchell managed to stifle most of his guffaws, even if he couldn’t quite hide the smile, so Anders just tied off the drawstring tightly above his hips and grudgingly bought Mitchell a coffee as a thank you on the drive to the new place.

‘You stay over often enough,’ Anders points out, watching Mitchell wrestle one mattress partway across the room while trying to keep a leg pressed against the other one so it won’t fall over. ‘And you’re really too long to keep sleeping on the sofa all the time. I don’t want you to start taking off work and spending your hours moaning about how your back hurts.’

Mitchell’s head snaps up and he stares at him for a moment, letting the mattress fall to the floor. Then he slinks forward to lean against the other one in the doorway, arms folding across his chest and a smirk growing wider with every step. ‘Aww, Anders,’ he says, grinning. ‘I don’t know what to say. You got a new flat with an extra bedroom just to save me from backache?’

Anders scoffs. ‘Hell no. Have you seen the kitchen? The end wall in there is on the other side of the entry closet and way wider than the space in my old place. I can put in a fish tank, like, twice the size of the old one in there. My buddies’ll have way more room to swim around.’

Mitchell just gives him that ridiculous little indulgent smile, eyebrows raised and lips a little pursed. Anders rolls his eyes and pushes off the wall, striding back out towards the front door.

‘I didn’t do it for you!’

‘I always knew you cared,’ Mitchell sing-songs, catching up with him in an instant and throwing an arm over his shoulders. Anders tries to shrug him off but the vampire uses a little of that super-human strength and refuses to be budged.

‘Fuck you. And get your arse down to the van, you still have to bring the bed frames up. Why didn’t you do that first, anyway? Won’t it be easier for you to put the frames together without the mattresses cluttering up the entire rooms?’

Mitchell halts abruptly and Anders quickly ducks out from under his arm, jogging down the front steps before the vampire can latch on again. He grins broadly as Mitchell’s deep, accented voice bellows out in a violent curse. ‘ _Fuck_!’


	2. Chapter 2

 ‘Mitchellll!’

The tinny bellow rocks through Mitchell’s skull and he groans, shoving his face into his pillow.

‘Mitchellll!  Mitchellll!  Mitchellll!’

Mitchell presses his face deeper into the pillow, bringing his arms up around it to hold the sides over his ears.

‘Mitchellll!  Mitchellll!’

‘I’m going to kill him.’  Mitchell squeezes his eyes tightly shut and growls into the pillow.  ‘I’m going to tear his throat out and beat him with one of his tiny precious leather shoes and scatter the little pieces of him over a bonfire to make sure he can’t come back.’

‘Mitchellll!  Mitchellll!  Mitchellll!’

The shrieking doesn’t stop, so Mitchell finally raises his head with an aggravated sigh and seizes his phone from the night table.  It takes him a sleepy moment of fumbling before he manages to answer the call.  ‘Just so you know, I really hate you.’

‘Mitchell!’ Anders’ real voice rings out jovially.  ‘How’s my favourite hybrid?’

Mitchell rolls over onto his back with a frown, shoving the pillow up against the headboard to prop up his shoulders.  ‘Hybrid?’

‘Vampire-leprechaun.’

‘Yeah, because that joke isn’t old at _all_.’  Mitchell rolls his eyes before rubbing blearily at them with his free hand.  ‘You going to tell me what you could possibly need at-‘ he squints at the clock.  ‘Six-fifteen?  Why the hell are you even awake?  You’re never willingly up until ten.’

‘You told me that if I didn’t get to the office before eight this morning you would, and I quote, sell me as a chew toy to the most vicious werewolf pack you could track down on the South Island and use the profits to buy a barbeque over which you would then cook my fish for lunch.’

Mitchell frowns, pausing in the motion of arching his back in a stretch.  ‘That actually worked?’  He'll have to make sure to write it down so he can use it again.  Anything that actually makes Anders do what he's been told to do is something to be cherished, treasured, and never forgotten.

‘Fuck you,’ Anders snaps sullenly.  ‘You’re a mean, heartless bastard, threatening innocent fish.  But seriously, you need to come over now.’

‘You’re at the office already?’

‘No, come to my flat.’

‘Why?’  Mitchell shuffles back until he’s sitting upright against the headboard, resigned to missing the last bit of sleep.

‘I need help,’ Anders says.

‘With _what_?  Can’t it wait until I get to work?’

‘No.  Just get over here, okay?  Now.  I’ll even feed you breakfast.’  And Anders hangs up.

Mitchell tumbles gracelessly out of bed with a long, satisfying grumble.  He gets dressed without really paying attention to what he’s putting on, thinking wistfully of a time before Anders knew what he was and the little god couldn’t get a clear read on him, and thus refrained from treating him like a complete slave except on bad work days.

Mitchell sighs as he locks his front door and starts jogging up the road toward Anders’.  There’s something wrong with a relationship, he thinks, when you know how comfortable the other person is with you based on how much of your soul they seem to think they own.

Anders’ front door is unlocked so he lets himself in.  ‘Anders?’

‘Kitchen!’

Mitchell prowls through the flat, tossing his sunglasses onto the entry hall table and unwinding his scarf.  The moment he rounds the corner to the kitchen, a glass jar is shoved up in front of his face.  He blinks.  ‘Good morning to you, too.’

Anders shakes the jar at him and Mitchell has to jerk backwards to avoid a painful whack on the nose.

‘Yes?’ he asks.  He thinks he’s being admirably polite, really, given that he was woken up early by a mad dwarf of a god and forced over here with no explanation.

‘Open,’ Anders orders.

Mitchell stares down at him.  ‘You’re joking.’

‘What?’

‘Anders.  You did not serious call me over here just to open a jam jar for you.’

Anders just gives him that bright-eyed, perfectly innocent look that fooled Mitchell for quite a while, actually, before he realized that Anders Johnson wouldn’t know innocence if it bit him.  He’d probably just get off on the biting.

Mitchell sighs and grabs the jar.  ‘Give it here.  Why is it so important right now, anyway?’

‘It’s morning,’ Anders points out, trooping back into the kitchen now that Mitchell has finally fallen to his bidding.  ‘You have to eat breakfast food in the morning.  But I’m not usually up and eating until a little before lunch, so the only breakfast food I have is jam.’

Mitchell has to use a little more strength than the average man would have at their disposal, but the jar lid pops off in a second.  He sets the jar down on the counter in front of his boss, and the blond immediately scoops up a spoonful and shoves it in his mouth.  Mitchell wrinkles his nose.  ‘You’re such a child sometimes.’

Anders just shrugs and eats another scoop of jam, so Mitchell starts combing through his fridge and cabinets.  ‘I realize this is a foreign concept for you but breakfast doesn’t have to be cereal or pancakes, yeah?  You must have something else….’  Frowning, he peers into the empty, shadowed depths of the over-counter cabinets.  ‘Christ, you really are a child.  Is all you eat jam and cheese? And you said on the phone you were going to feed me breakfast.  What am I supposed to eat here?'

‘There’s also vodka,’ Anders protests.  ‘It doesn’t get any more grown up than Fenrir, my friend.’  But his hands are sticky and his mouth is smeared with purple, and Mitchell just shakes his head hopelessly.  Anders doesn't even notice as he's busy digging a second spoon out of a drawer.  He holds the spoon out to Mitchell and offers him the jar.  'Share?'

Mitchell stares flatly at him.  'You're buying me coffee and a breakfast sandwich on the way to work.'

Bragi's vessel, ever eloquent, shrugs as he tosses the extra spoon onto the counter and flicks a bit of jam at Mitchell that misses easily and splats on the floor.  'Suit yourself.'  Anders waves a hand at him imperiously and wanders out into the rest of the flat.  ‘Come on, I’ve got some more jobs for you while you’re here and we’re both sober.  The fish tank lid is stuck as well so I can't feed them, and a light bulb’s out in the toilet but I don’t have a step ladder.’

‘I’m not your personal supernatural jungle gym-slash-handy man,’ Mitchell reminds the god, and it surely must be for at least the twentieth time, but Anders cheerfully ignores him as always and starts talking to his fish instead.

‘Hey little guys, you hungry?  I bet you are.  Don’t worry, your rescue team is here!  Just hide over there under the castle in case the nasty old vampire decides he wants a snack while he’s working, okay?  Hey, Mitchell, would cold-blooded animals be like ice cream to you?’

Mitchell can’t help chuckling and he knows that with Anders, once he’s laughed, he’s been beaten, so he walks over and pushes up his sleeves.  ‘I’ve never tried.  And I promise your fish are off the menu for today, but I’ll only be your workman if you agree to get rid of your horrible screeching on my phone’s ring tone.’

Anders just snickers at him and tickles his fish through the glass.

Mitchell sighs.  Some days he really feels like a primary school teacher.


End file.
